In the midst of the usual fretting and curve-o-phobia around the holidays, it's wonderful to come across an article that advocates enjoying some real freedom at this time of the year.

It's from the Times of India, and while some of it is a bit culture-specific (particularly the part about the cult of thinness being a "western" conspiracy, since, as well all know, the Western ideal was fuller figured throughout history, right up until the 20th century), the central message, to "indulge yourself" and to enjoy "the good things of life," is really worth taking to heart.

Here's the relevant text:

...............

Don't waste your time and energy watching your weight. You may lose out on the good things of life. In any case, if you're meant to be big, you will be that anyway, even if you fork out a fortune for gyms and kill yourself by not eating well. So, indulge yourself, eat well; after all, you only live once.

How can you be so dense as to not see it? That this is the conspiracy of the western world in trying to fit everyone into their mould...

Big is beautiful, may it always be so...

In any case, don't you have anything else to think about...?

There are serious issues that need your full, undivided attention and here you are agonising whether you should skip the bonda for the bhajji.

The article is wonderful because it openly acknowledges how irresistible men find it when Ms. Lawson - or any voluptuous vixen - speaks openly and unapologetically about her love of food. Two quotations from Nigella stand out in particular:

“I always know when a man loves me, if he loves my legs. Not muscular. Wide knees. I don’t have a muscle anywhere on my body. Not anywhere.”

That is as perfect an expression of preference for soft, timeless femininity over modern androgyny as any I've ever heard.

But the article includes another quote as well, and this may perhaps be the most seductive statement that any goddess has ever spoken:

“I am greedy. I always like the thought of eating more.”

To be able to use that forbidden phrase with such relish indicates a breathtaking degree of freedom from modernist brainwashing. Let's hope that her words inspire many other curvy girls to enjoy a similar sense of liberation, at this festive of year.

Ms. Lawson's statements may sound daring and transgressive to us, indoctrinated as we have been by diet-industry propaganda. But in any other day and age, they would have been seen as completely natural--and extremely attractive. In fact, the very notion of a beautiful woman deliberately starving or torturing herself would have been considered madness. Nigella Lawson's presentation of self-indulgence as a seductive and quintessentially feminine trait would have been a self-evident truth to the audience of Lillian Russell's day.

Here is another promotional card of Miss Russell from 1888. Once again, we see that a delight in eating well was as central to her public image as was her storied beauty (with the latter being presented as a consequence of the former):

Holiday festivities are undoubtedly the best time of year for present-day voluptuous vixens to take a page out of Lillian's book (or Nigella's), and to live life to the fullest--and then, to adopt the same liberated spirit thoughout the year . . .